New Media and Digital Journalism at a glance: Introduction to New Media Framework

New Media Ecology:

Before understanding New Media Ecology, it is important to understand the term Media Ecology.

The term Media Ecology emerged accidentally through an exchange of letters between Marshal McLuhan and Neil Postman. In a letter exchange, McLuhan wrote the terms Media and Ecology separately and Postman remarked that Media Ecology can be a theory.

Marshal McLuhan

Media Ecology, besides being a theory became a Doctoral program in the University of New York namely “Ecology of Media” that aimed at observing, researching, understanding and developing concepts that would be the sustenance of the theory.[1]

“Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.”[2]

Marshall McLuhan has made a great contribution towards Media Ecology in a way that his theory “Medium is the message” is widely used to understand Media Ecology. Since Ecology means the environment, the structure and every attribute surrounding a thing, media ecology means the attributes and surroundings of “Media” and what impact it has on the people.

According to Webopedia, “New media is used to describe content made available using different forms of electronic communication made possible through the use of computer technology. Generally, the phrase new media describes content available on-demand through the Internet.”[3]

New Media is different from Old Media only in the sense that it is content on-demand and it is available on Digital platforms. While Newspapers are part of Old Media, e-papers are part of New Media. Postal Mail is old media and e-mail is new media. New Media is the extension of the old media just like Media is an extension of the human senses.

New Media Ecology is different from Media Ecology only in the sense that New Media ecology aims to study how New Media or Digital Media affects human understanding and what environment is associated with New Media. Everything from the infrastructure associated with new media whether it is computers, mobile, internet, software to how the contemporary world is changing under New Media comes under New Media Ecology.

The advent of New Media changed people’s behaviours from enjoying in Public spheres to having their own individual space. The growth of on-demand movie platforms like Netflix and Amazon prime show that people prefer watching the content they like in the comfort of their own homes instead of going to the theatre and watching it with other audience as well. Even though there is a huge chunk of people who prefer watching movies in theatres too. Similarly, every person’s phone has personalised apps with customised services meant for them.

New Media has also converted the world into a “Global Village” where people sitting in any corner of the world can access information from another part of the world or even interact with a person sitting miles away using Skype, Whatsapp or any other digital platform within seconds.

The technological change in New Media Ecology is just as important as the behavioural changes of the people using that technology. Video-sharing platform Vine became outdated and shut down while Youtube has overtaken the video-sharing market. The number of “prosumers” have increased manifold over the years.